When you read, you make choices. You translate what you read into the language of your life. A book like Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina could also be the collection of lives it has changed, for better or for worse. In this first play Tiago Rodrigues writes for tg STAN, he convincingly builds a bridge between the actors of the Portuguese Teatro Nacional and those of STAN.

Trajal Harrell explores a moment in dance history when female artists presented performances on the boundary between entertainment, erotic dancing, and early experiments in modern dance. CAEN AMOUR is structured as a hoochie coochie show. With a seductive performance, scantily dressed ‘hoochies’ lure you around to the backstage area, to reveal the festivities on the ‘coochie’ side.

Charlemagne Palestine is unleashing his strumming technique on the Bösendorfer Imperial: a piano that covers eight complete octaves. His instrument looks like a sculpted altar made of cuddly toys. He elevates these to divine creatures or shamanistic totems that are always close by.

Caspar Western Friedrich combines the narrative force of the Western with the dreamy longings of Romanticism. Drawing his inspiration from the lonesome cowboy and from the paintings and personality of Caspar David Friedrich, Philippe Quesne builds a studio of landscapes on stage.

SSSSSSSSSSSS is a solo about survival instincts based on Butoh techniques, performed in the public space. Initially, Misevičiūtė looks like one of those street artists who pretend to be statues, but the meticulous movements of her living sculpture gradually evolve into a choreography.

Forced Entertainment performs Shakespeare’s complete works in only six days. In 36 mini plays that are as funny and fascinating as they are accessible, the theatre pioneers demonstrate their impressive storytelling power yet again. The cast? Everyday home, garden, and kitchen objects. The stage? A one-metre table top.

In 2012 Karthik Pandian and Andros Zins-Browne visited the Atlas Film Studios in Morocco. They rented a group of camels, which they tried to coax into dancing in amongst the old film sets. With Atlas Revisited, the artists take a look back at this quest for an image of freedom – with brand new video material.

Inspired by an old map of the Middle East – which clearly shows how many cross-border train connections there once were, Dictaphone Group went on a research mission along the entirely disused railway network in modern-day Lebanon. Nothing to Declare is about the meaning of borders within Lebanon, borders with the neighbouring countries and borders in the Arab world.

Sirine Fattouh guides you through a piece of Lebanese history based on a personal selection of artworks. She hereby focuses on three specific moments: the end of the civil war in the late nineties, the assassination of the former prime minister in 2005, and the Israeli attacks on Lebanon in 2006.

With an annually recurring city cycle, Moussem’s Nomadic Arts Centre offers an insight into contemporary Arab societies and the dynamic of their cities. Every year, an Arab city is a guest in the capital of Europe. Over the course of this ten-day festival, guest artists, relevant thinkers and cultural players tell the story of their city through their work.